Where New Adaptations Come From

 I posted a video in which I explain where new evolutionary adaptations, and cultural innovations, come from. I filmed the video in Strasbourg, which has many old villages crammed together, such as Hoenheim (where I live) and Bischeim and even one called Souffelweyersheim.

Here is how I learned the process of natural selection. A new mutation appears, then if it is a good one, natural selection favors it. It starts off very rare—only one individual carries it—and ends up common, maybe even going to fixation (completely replacing the other versions of the gene). This is the way I taught it, and the way I wrote about it in my Encyclopedia of Evolution.

But the reality is more complicated, as is usually the case in science. If the mutation appears in a large population, say, a million organisms, then it is extremely rare—one in a million. No matter how good it is, it can get lost by random events before it has a chance to get selected. It has virtually no chance.

But suppose the large population, a million individuals, consists of small interconnected populations, maybe a hundred each. If the mutation occurs in one of them, it has a chance of becoming common, maybe even going to fixation. One chance in a hundred. Then if it spreads to another population, it has another one chance in a hundred to go to fixation. If this happens a hundred times, the new mutation now has ten thousand chances out of a million to be successful.

This is the shifting balances theory of Sewall Wright, who was one of the most important figures in the modern theory of evolution. He was publishing books right up until his death almost at age 100. New adaptations get started in small populations. That is the only way they have a ghost of a chance of succeeding. This is how natural selection must work.

Cultural evolution works the same way, but with ideas instead of genes. Suppose somebody got a great new idea in Hoenheim (or even Souffelweyersheim!). In a small village, the idea might have a chance to spread. If it becomes common in Hoenheim, it might become common in Strasbourg as well. And from there it might have a chance of success in Paris. (This may be unlikely, since Parisians consider themselves the cultural center of the universe, and Strasbourg, to them, is unspeakably provincial.) And from Paris, maybe the world. But the new idea popping up in Paris would get swamped out by all the other ideas in Paris.

This is not the whole story because, of course, Paris consists of lots of small populations, local neighborhoods and arrondissements. A big new idea in the 49^th arrondissement might spread to the 5^th.

One of the major examples of a cultural innovation starting in a place considered provincial is the printing press. Johannes Gutenberg perhaps had to start in an out of the way place—in fact, it was Strasbourg, where I now live. He did not start in Paris or Vienna.

 

How Biology Is, Or Is Not, Different: Thoughts from Ernst Mayr

Ernst Mayr was one of the leading figures in modern biology. He was the last surviving architect of The New Synthesis of evolution. And he kept writing books until he died at age 100 in 2005. Because of his age, his writing is fairly clear: he knew he did not have time to go off onto tangents. He had to get to the point, since he knew any sentence might be his last.

One of his main points (expressed in two books, This is Biology and What Makes Biology Unique?, which are very similar but not quite the same) is that biology cannot be judged by the same standards of scientific rigor as the physical sciences. Yes, we all know that biological systems (such as organisms) follow natural laws. But each biological phenomenon is the result of such a prodigious number of interacting natural laws that you can never exactly predict what is going to happen. The best example is evolution. Immanuel Kant said that there would never be a Newton for a blade of grass. Several writers have noted that Darwin became that very person.

But Darwin was a “Newton for a blade of grass” because he changed our view of biology the way Newton changed the view of physics. What Darwin did not do was to establish a system by which the exact course of evolution could be predicted. One reason for this is that each organism is unique, while each electron is the same as every other electron. It is true that the molecules in a glass of water are different from one another; each has its own kinetic energy, and some of them have hydrogen and/or oxygen atoms with extra neutrons. Although one could say that a glass of water has a “population” of molecules, they do not differ from one another in the extreme way that organisms in a population do.

I will let you read Mayr’s books, if you wish. But I want to remind all of us that there are some laws of nature that biological systems always follow. They include:

• The rate of diffusion (of molecules, heat, electrons, etc.) is proportional to the concentration or energy status divided by the resistance. One of the components of resistance is distance; it takes a molecule four times as long to diffuse twice as far. This is why diffusion is rapid over short distances, such as a synapse, and slow over long distances, such as a room. This is true everywhere in biology. This is why leaves and animal tissues both have numerous, tiny vessels. I am aware of no exceptions.
• A related concept is that an increased surface-to-volume ratio increases chemical activity. This is why kindling burns faster than a log, and why bacteria can metabolize so quickly. Any exceptions?
• A third example is from fluid dynamics. The rate of fluid flow is proportional to the fourth power of the diameter of the vessel. This law is always true for laminar flow, such as in blood vessels and xylem. Any exceptions? For larger things, such as water pipes, gas pipes, and rivers, it is almost true, but turbulent flow (when the fluid starts roiling around) slows the fluid down.

Most scientists agree with Mayr. This is the main reason that I am seldom interested in mathematical models of biological phenomena. A few decades ago, various botanists figured out equations for how much transpiration was needed to cool a leaf off, and how big or small a leaf should be to keep from overheating, and other such things. The equations gave a verisimilitude of precision. Actual leaves may or may not follow these equations precisely. They are good generalizations, but no more than that.

I recommend the writings of Ernst Mayr, even if you are not a professional scientist. Even at age 100 he had an all-encompassing mind.

Darwin at the Mall

Ho ho ho. The Christmas shopping season is upon us. Greetings from someone who doesn’t enjoy shopping. I’m no Grinch or Scrooge; I just do not enjoy materialism. A walk in the woods, or reading or writing something creative, is much more enjoyable to me than a trip to the Mall. I enjoy receiving gifts, but not all that much. I am sort of like the Dalai Lama on his birthday in the cartoon: he said, “Just what I always wanted! Nothing!” as he looked into an empty box. But it was recently necessary for me to go with my family to the Mall, and when I did, I decided to use it as an opportunity to observe the human species from the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist.

In Tulsa, “The Mall” usually refers to Woodland Hills Mall at 71^st and Memorial. The first thing I noticed was how many clothes retailers there were, each with its own brand. As far as I could tell, all of the clothes that they sold were more or less alike, except for either (1) a status label, or (2) subtle messages that are meaningful only to the sender and the receiver of the message. Right away this reminded me of the 1981 discovery by Nancy Burley that the simple act of putting a red leg band on a male zebra finch would enhance its success of mating. Although this effect has recently been called into question, it remains a memorable example of how something as arbitrary as a leg band can turn out to be a social signal to animals. In many birds, bright feathers are indicators of health. But the exact form of the indicator in one animal species may be meaningless to another. We think it quaint when we read about the Mayoruna tribe in the Amazon decorating their faces with cat whisker tattoos and even embedding palm fibers in their lips like cat whiskers. But to them, our flaunting of brand name clothing would seem as incomprehensible as their decorations seem to us. Of course, they are probably now wearing American brand-name T-shirts and shorts, having been brought into the splendor and comfort of western civilization.

At the same time, many of the businesses appeared nearly desperate to come up with something new other than just to sell the same items as everyone else. In these cases, it is innovation, not just a label, that is the status marker. However, innovations can be just as arbitrary as labels. Just how much innovation can you have in a wristwatch? You can make them into timepieces with atomic accuracy. Or you can replace the hands with little bubbles on an analog face; a large and a small bubble revolve around the center of the watch face. And there was a shop that sold many interesting and wonderful flavors of tea. But after awhile, all the different fruit and flower flavors start seeming alike. Enter monkey-picked tea. This is tea made from the youngest leaves of the tea trees, which grow on branches so delicate that only trained monkeys can harvest them. I tried some; it tasted like tea. The only value of this type of innovation would be if the recipient knows that the tea leaves were picked by monkeys. These innovations are mostly valuable as status symbols.

Perhaps the main products being marketed at this mall are placebos. The labels and innovations do not produce a qualitative difference in the products, but the shoppers can easily imagine that they do. They imagine that monkey tea tastes different from ordinary tea if, in advance, they know that it is monkey tea. It is well known that even many expert wine-tasters will choose wines they think are expensive, even if the wines are cheap brands in expensive bottles. In one corner of the Mall, there were a few shiatsu-massage chairs into which you could insert a dollar and try them out. I gave one of them a try, and found it to be annoying, perhaps because I am not shaped like a typical American and the pokes and nudges touched me in the wrong places. It goosed me a couple of times. I wonder if  “shiatsu” is Japanese for “placebo.” While there is no doubt that massages feel good, I am skeptical that there are “shiatsu points” of special significance on the body. I watched a young Thai mother of four trying out the chair as her kids pommeled on her. The chair evoked an artificial lordosis from her as she was transported into ecstasy. It worked for her. Or maybe it was just her kids tickling her. I wondered whether I should even be watching her.

Finally, I noticed that even though I’d come without the intention of buying anything, I ended up spending a couple of hundred dollars, largely on status and placebo items. Social forces act upon our behavior in ways of which we are hardly conscious, and sometimes despite our best efforts to be conscious of them.

I bought some items at See’s Candies. At last here is something that is truly different and superior: I have tasted many kinds of candy, but none can measure up to See’s. As I tried a sample, I kept asking myself if I was merely experiencing a placebo effect. If I was, it was despite my best effort to be objective. But this purchase accounted for only about twenty dollars of my total expenditure. When I got home, I was not sure how I ended up spending sixty dollars on candles. Evolution has adapted us with flexibility to adjust to changing social environments. The social environment is our human environment; we create it, and it creates us.

New video

I posted a new video on the StanEvolve channel: Barbecue with Wranglin’ Rich. It presents Richard Wrangham's cooking hypothesis of human evolution. And it has the approval of Wranglin' Rich himself. His email from Harvard noted, "Dear Stanley: I love it! Thank you for sending the link, and for promoting the cooking hypothesis. I will proudly share with my family. Actually I have a question. You cited an article from Life Magazine from the 1960s, but I don't think I know it. Can you give me a citation? It sounds like something that Carleton Coon might have said. I looked at some of your other productions. Great stuff! Appreciatively, Richard." I told him what I could of the article. Hope y'all enjoy the new video.

Confessions of an Oklahoma Evolutionist

I gave a presentation last Saturday afternoon in Tulsa. There were 35 people in attendance. It was every teacher’s dream. Not every lecturer’s dream: if your idea is that the audience will just passively absorb what you say, then this audience was not for you. But they were actively engaged in my presentation, and then asked questions for a half hour afterwards. While I think my presentation was good and had many valuable insights, the best part was clearly the audience discussion. In particular, I was not always the person to answer the question. I was ready for disagreement, but it turned out there was none. Convened by the Humanist Association of Tulsa, the audience seemed to consist mostly of Unitarians. But they were very knowledgeable people, including some who were retired scientists and science writers.

Briefly, my point was that evolutionists cannot ignore religion. Religion evolved and may be an instinct. Religion can be good or bad, and we should facilitate the good things and oppose the bad things. I focused on my own experiences, and those of my ancestors in Oklahoma. It was a very personal story, long on experiences and short on science, as appropriate for this audience. A PDF of the script from which I extemporized is at my website. The direct connection is here.

The audience brought up some interesting things to discuss. If I get a chance to post video clips from this session (which I will announce later), I hope to include some of the audience dynamics. One person wanted to know whether technology speeds up or slows down natural selection. Another wanted to know about the humanity and intelligence of the Neanderthals. Another wanted to discuss the origin of languages and the possible pivotal role of women in this process. While I had a lot to say from my extensive reading and writing on these topics, I was happy to defer to my wife, Lee Rice, who has studied and taught linguistics. She took a break from being a camera-person to leading a brief discussion. Thanks!

Julie Angle, on the education faculty at Oklahoma State University, was present, and whenever there was discussion of teaching evolution in Oklahoma, I was able to ask her to help. I said that if I have questions about science education, I would turn to her. I did not plan her presence; it was a lucky blessing. Thanks!

It is always a pleasure when a speaker, even one dressed up like Charles Darwin, can let the audience keep a good discussion going. I tend to be a control freak, but I have learned to deliberately let discussions take on a life and an evolutionary trajectory of their own.

Thanks to Larry Roth and the Humanist Association of Tulsa for sponsoring this presentation.

Darwin Presentation in Tulsa on Saturday Feb 16

Here is an announcement of my presentation this Saturday:

OESE president-elect Dr. Stanley Rice will give a presentation titled "Confessions of an Oklahoma Evolutionist: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" on Saturday, Feb. 16 in the Harmon Conference Room of the Genealogy Center at 2901 S. Harvard Ave. in Tulsa at 2:00 PM. For details, visit the Oklahoma Science Teachers Association online here.

Religion vs. Science, the Vast Gulf Part Eleven: Was the World Made for Man?

It was on this day in 1831 that the Beagle voyage, on which the young Charles Darwin rode, began. No one, least of all Darwin, had any idea how significant this voyage would be—especially in terms of answering the question posed in the title.

This question of whether the world was made for man received its most famous answer from Mark Twain in a stunning and brilliant and humorous essay by that name. As I write this, I cannot find the essay online, and my copy is back in the office. Therefore all quotes are from memory. As I recall, Twain’s argument was that the world cannot have been made for man because of the vast period of prehistory to which man, “as impatient as the Creator undoubtedly was to see him and admire him,” was irrelevant. Twain ridiculed the idea that the vast periods of geological time were a preparation for man. Before God could make man, He had to prepare the world for him. “It was foreseen that man would need the oyster, and coal to cook it with,” so God spent millions of years making oceans with oysters and swamps that later became coal. “Now the oyster probably thought that the millions of years preceding him were meant as preparation for him—but that would be just like an oyster, which is the most conceited being that there is, except man.” And then there were the long dinosaur ages, with what Twain called dinosaurians and Arkansawrians. Lastly, Twain compared the time that man has been on the Earth to the coat of paint at the top of the (at the time new) Eiffel Tower. He supposed that the coat of paint was what the Eiffel Tower was made for, if the world was made for man.

Interestingly, Twain intended his essay as a response to Alfred Russel Wallace, friend of Charles Darwin and co-discoverer of evolution. Wallace saw the vast periods of evolutionary time as part of God’s great story which culminated in mankind. Wallace was a spiritualist, and probably made more money giving spiritualist speaking tours (mostly in California) than from his evolution writings. In other words, Twain was criticizing someone that modern ID proponents and creationists would consider an evolutionist.

But clearly the Biblical viewpoint is that the world (1) was designed (2) for man. Of course, Adam and Eve lived in a garden, and their descendants were hunters, gatherers, and small farmers. Genesis actually depicts the rise of cities, such as Babel, Sodom, and Gomorrah, as evil. But modern religious people mostly believe that God wants us to live in cities with advanced technology. They therefore think that the world (1) was designed (2) for man (3) to live as we live today (in terms of our economy and technology).

All three points are clearly wrong. The world was not designed at all, certainly not for humans. Our chromosomes are filled with dead genes and dead viruses, and horrible mutations from which natural selection has incompletely cleansed us. There are more parasites than the most creative human could have thought of. I have heard creationists claim that Satan created all parasites, because they are so acutely embarrassed of the problems that result from attributing them to a loving God. I and others have written much about this, and I must leave the point for now.

But clearly the world was not designed for us to live with modern technology. Today, this is most clearly demonstrated by the greenhouse effect causing global climate disruption. There are seven billion of us, with eighty million more each year, and the average person produces directly or indirectly more carbon dioxide every year than the last. The natural ecosystems of the Earth simply cannot process all of this extra carbon dioxide any better today than it could at the end of the Permian period, when a massive die-off occurred as a result of climate change caused by volcanic eruptions, or at the end of the Cretaceous period, when a massive die-off occurred as a result of fires caused by an asteroid. The ecosystems of the Earth have not evolved the ability to deal with massive fluxions of carbon dioxide that occurred at those times or that is occurring today. They did evolve the ability to deal with lesser perturbations.

Modern religion assumes God designed the world for us to live in it as we do today, with advanced technology and massive carbon emissions. In three ways, this assumption is proving wrong and, in the third case, dangerously wrong.

New Video: Darwin Does Not Debate

Should we debate with creationists? Charles Darwin explains why this is a waste of time. It is similar to other pseudoscience debates, such as the Larry King show where UFO believers ganged up on Bill Nye. Poor Bill. What do you think? Post comments and start a discussion. You can find the new video here and other videos are on the Darwin Channel. Also feel free to check out Mitt Romney and Sally Kern on the Republican Climate channel, which is separate from the science-based Darwin Channel.

Two YouTube videos

I just posted a new YouTube video on the Darwin Channel in which Darwin explains the symbiogenetic origin of complex cells using sushi as a visual example. The direct link is here.


Another useful video is one that I posted a long time ago and it has gotten buried under dozens of others. It is called "Darwin eats a hamburger" and it ties several crucial themes in biology together: nutrition (the dangers of eating too much fat), global warming (raising cattle releases a lot of greenhouse gas), and evolution (why we crave fat). In this video, Emma Darwin also speaks from behind the camera. The direct link is here.

The Evolution of Everything, by Mark Sumner

Note: In the event that this website ceases to work, please follow instructions at http://www.stanleyrice.com/ to find new blog entries. Google, which runs Blogger, does not respond to any reports of malfunctions in their system. It appears that they have no quality control at all. My other blog has been malfunctioning for months, and now my YouTube channel has stopped accepting new uploads. In the event that this is the last blog post Google permits me to make, please check my website for updated instructions.

Here is this week’s new blog post:

The Evolution of Everything: How Selection Shapes Culture, Commerce, and Nature, by Mark Sumner (PoliPoint Press, 2010) is one of the most delightful books that I have read. It doesn’t quite deliver on its promise. For example, it has nothing about the use of natural selection in evolutionary computation. Furthermore, his application of evolution to everything is mostly metaphorical. But it is interesting, and gave me several new insights. Consider these examples.

Evolution depends upon and produces biodiversity. But humans, particularly conservatives, tend to devalue biodiversity. Sumner quotes Ronald Reagan, who said during the 1966 California governor’s race, “I mean, if you’ve looked at a hundred thousand acres of so of trees—you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?” He then makes the point that businesses depend on diversity of products and stores just as natural selection depends on genetic variation.

Sumner also drew an analogy between evolutionary mass extinctions and market perturbations. Extinctions, in evolutionary time, are opportunities for species, especially small ones that grow quickly. Similarly, most new companies start during financial turmoil. “Post-extinction-event worlds are worlds for small animals. Post-economic-disaster worlds are worlds of opportunity for small businesses.” Massive corporations have many vulnerabilities; “TBTF” simply means that we are scared to let them fail.

Sumner also writes about altruism, and explains that from the Founding Fathers until the end of the nineteenth century, the American government embraced altruism by controlling banking and supported infrastructure, things that free-market conservatives today reject. “More than one voice would be quick to declare these ideas (the ideas of Washington, Hamilton, and Lincoln) to be socialist. Even un-American.”

Sumner had something to say about creationism, too. Only 40 percent of Americans accept continental drift, although it is measurable. This would seem to be a shocking statistic regarding American ignorance. But perhaps it is not ignorance so much as it is racism, which makes it even more shocking. Sumner says this result came from the way the question was worded. The survey asked, Were America and Africa once part of the same continent? Most of the “no” answers came from the South; and this, as Sumner points out, is where fewer than half believe that Obama was born in America. Other interpretations are possible, but Sumner’s interpretation certainly caught my attention.

Much of Sumner’s book is about the history of evolutionary thought, things that most of us already know. But it is so delightfully written that it was a pleasure to read things I already knew. For example, this is what he had to say about Darwin: “Although others had previously floated proposals about the mechanism by which evolution operated, Darwin’s hypothesis was meticulously researched, brilliantly argued, eloquently written, and vigorously defended. A hundred and fifty years of effort by the world’s most motivated detractors has done nothing more than prove that Darwin’s ideas were even better than he knew. Darwin is remembered because Darwin was right.”

Darwin Had a Sense of Humour

Anyone who has read the Origin of Species would say that it is clearly and beautifully written, with occasional bursts of beauty, even though it is verbose and formal like all Victorian writing. But funny? I wasn’t expecting Darwin’s writing to be funny. But there is a passage in Descent of Man that is funnier than anything I have read by other Victorian writers.

Darwin begins the Descent of Man by presenting evidence of the close similarity of humans and apes. He mentions several anatomical characteristics in which humans and apes hardly differ at all. In this book and in the Expression of Emotions, Darwin notes many behavioral similarities (gestures, facial expressions, etc.) that humans share with apes. But Darwin had very little to say about physiological similarities, because so little was known about physiology at the time. Enzymes? Genes? How nerves work? None of this was known.

Darwin did the next best thing. He presented evidence that humans and other apes have similar physiological reactions to chemicals. One of the chemicals that he chose was alcohol. Here is a really funny passage, in which Darwin explains not only that monkeys can get drunk, but even have similar responses the next day (Chapter 1):

“Many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors: they will also, as I have myself seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure. Brehm asserts that the natives of north-eastern Africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with strong beer, by which they are made drunk. He has seen some of these animals, which he kept in confinement, in this state; and he gives a laughable account of their behavior and strange grimaces. On the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons. An American monkey…after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many men. These trifling facts prove how similar the nerves of taste must be in monkeys and man, and how similarly the whole nervous system is affected.”

A passage that is both funny and scientifically significant. Way to go, Charley!

Does God Hate Darwin?

According to a church marquee in Durant, Oklahoma, where I work, God must be really mad at me. I teach evolution at the local university, and according to this church, I am calling God a liar. If this is true I better watch out. Of course, that is not what I am doing. I am saying that fundamentalists are (often willfully) wrong about how to interpret the Bible; but if I disagree with them, then I MUST be calling God a liar. They think that their opinions are inerrant. I suspect that it is they who should be worried about offending God.

See this YouTube video of Charles Darwin making a response!

My Fun Creationist Weekend, Part Six. Lies and Damned Lies at the Creationist Museum

On March 5 I visited Carl Baugh’s Creation Evidences Museum near Glen Rose, Texas. In the previous entry, I described some of the displays. But the most prominent display of all, nestled among scriptural scrolls, is the Darwin display. All it has in it is a few of Darwin’s book, one of which has one of his more lugubrious photos on the cover, and a collection of slave shackles and handcuffs (see photo).


The message is clear, just as it was in Bill Gordon’s museum in Oklahoma: belief in evolution causes human oppression and slavery. If you believe we evolved, then you think people can be treated like animals, but if you believe humans were created, then you will treat them like fellow children of God. The footprint displays were lies; but this one was a damned lie.


First, consider the clear message that it proclaimed: Darwinian evolutionary science causes such things as slavery. As anyone knows who has read the masterpiece 2009 book by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, both sides of Darwin’s family were abolitionists, and Darwin detested slavery. Moreover, Darwin transferred his early belief in the common origin of all human races from Adam and Eve into his later acceptance of the common evolutionary origin of all human races. Desmond and Moore’s book also documents the creationist beliefs of American slaveholders and their scientific sympathizers. Louis Agassiz was most notable among them, but there were many others. If we must draw a causal inference, it would be that because slavery was forced out of existence during the period of history in which scientists and some societies and churches accepted evolution, then evolution deserves the credit. No causal inference either way is, however, justified. Certainly Darwin did not cause black American slavery. This is something only hypnotized victims of Baugh’s sermon could believe as they glanced at the displays.


Second, consider what the display did not mention. The history of Christianity in the western world for the last two millennia has, until very recently, been the story of murder and oppression. Ask any Huguenot victim of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre if Lamarck caused their plight. And nearly all of the five hundred sovereign Native American nations had been conquered, and many exterminated, by Darwin’s time. It was religious zeal (and greed and plunder) that caused the Spanish settlements started by Columbus to enslave, then torture and kill, the Caribbean natives, against which the lone Christian voice was Bartolomé de las Casas. The Pilgrims, so much revered by creationists and other Christian conservatives, surrounded Pequot villages, set them ablaze, and shot anyone attempting to escape. Here is what William Bradford wrote: “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they [the colonists] gave praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully.” While massacres based on the Christian religion are today rare, the uncomfortable fact remains that one of the conservatives’ favorite books of the Bible is Revelation, which depicts a violent Jesus making the Earth run red with blood.


Baugh’s display added stupidity to dishonesty. It was not until I got home and looked at the photograph (look at it again!) that I noticed that one of the slave shackles was from the “Georgetown County Plantation Police.” The printing seemed awfully crisp to be on a real, well-used slave shackle. So I googled the name. It turns out that fake Georgetown County Plantation Police paraphernalia are sold on the internet. Badges are more popular, but you can get the shackles on Amazon for $39.99. (“Customers who bought related items also bought Wild Planet Spy Gear Night Goggles!”) If Baugh just stopped at being a fraud, and satisfied himself with entertaining lies about giant humans and about how moonlight allowed pre-Flood humans to live almost a thousand years, it might be funny; but he has slipped into the world of attempting to stir up hatred of evolutionary scientists.


Don’t miss my new book, Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-Aged, Stressed-Out World, just published by Prometheus Books.

St. Charles

In his book Darwin Loves You, George Levine spends page after page insisting that he is not trying to write a hagiography of Charles Darwin. In this blog entry, I am taking the opposite approach. It is not my intention to literally make Charles Darwin appear to be a saint, but he had some strikingly saintly characteristics. I want to call a few of them to your attention.

First, he had the perseverance of a saint. He had experiments set up all over his house, he read everything he could get and corresponded with dozens of people around the world, despite his debilitating illness. Even when ill, he would force himself to walk on his thinking path (the Sandwalk). He wanted to know the truth and find the evidence for it.

Second, he had the passion of a saint. One of his main passions was his opposition to slavery. Desmond and Moore, in their 2009 book, demonstrate that Darwin got his concept for the Tree of Life from his conviction that all humans shared a common ancestor and that all were equal; he then extended the concept to the entire world of species.

Third, he had the mild manner of a saint. He was kind and fair. He did not act egotistical and mean the way some of his opponents did and do, such as Darwin’s contemporary Richard Owen, and our contemporary Tom Delay who dismisses all who accept evolution as slime-worshippers.

Darwin was a magistrate of his local district. One incident is recorded in which a poor man was accused of poaching on government land. The evidence was clear, and Darwin found him guilty and levied the required fine. But then, Darwin paid the fine himself. The parallel with Jesus Christ is unmistakable: Christians think that God levied a fine on sinful humans, and Jesus paid the fine for us. What creationist has ever done anything like what Darwin did for the poor man?